Standard Operating Procedure
by Errol Morris
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Actor: Christopher Bradley, Javal Davis, Megan Ambuhl Graner, Robin Dill, Sarah DenningDirector: Errol Morris
Brand: MORRIS,ERROL
Cinematographer: Robert Chappell
Producer: Errol Morris
Producer: Amanda Branson Gill
Producer: Ann Petrone
Producer: Diane Weyermann
Producer: Julie Ahlberg
Producer: Robert Fernandez
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.40:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Standard Operating Procedure
DVD Review: S.O.P. or S.O.B's.
Summary: 4 Stars
Standard Operating Procedure is an inexpensively made documentary of Americans who committed atrocities against people they were there to liberate instead of humiliate or obliterate. There are interviews with the cast of characters who participated in these degradations, including one sergeant who reported abuse, a chastened piece of trailer trash named Lynndie England, and Brigadier General (BG) Janis Karpinski. The most sickening part of all were the pictures of inmates forming pyramids and pictures of female soldiers smiling over a corpse, or another with a leash on a detainee. The music, effective, sets the mood for the viewer to open up a can of whoopas on some fellow Americans for their brutality and stupidity.
The film's strength is that it makes me ask myself what I would have done. Having been a junior cavalry officer thirty years ago, I have to ask myself, would I have followed orders or would I have treated the detainees within the articles of the Geneva Convention? Would I have been like the enlisted man who decided to punish one detainee because he had been told that he was brought in for rape? Would I have stood up to the civilians, military intelligence, or the C.I.A. who came through there like it was Times Square? Or, would have been like one sergeant who refused to participate and reported what he saw to his officer who did nothing?! These images tempered my thoughts and my outrage, because I know what I would do at this age, but what would I have done at twenty-eight?
BG Karpinski seemed set up to fail by having all the responsibility, but no authority, a sure sign that you will fry if anything goes wrong. She is in charge of a prison that has a capacity for 200 that very quickly reaches 2000. She is in charge of several prisons over a wide geographical area. She is ordered not to release anyone. This includes people thrown in there for street altercations and other non-terrifying acts. Major General Miller arrives with Carte Blanche from (?) to bring the same "correction techniques" from Guantanamo Bay to Abu-Ghraib.
The part of the film that could make any viewer want to down a seltzer water with a Pepto Bismol chaser or punch a bag, was the sickening rationale given by some some enlisted for what they did. The woman who smiled broadly over the corpse of a dead Iraqi general defended her photo with, "I always smile for pictures." There was the once cocky Lynndie England explain how she was duped and seduced by SPC Graner who would later deny that her baby was his. The most poignant was a staff sergeant who admitted that we had lost our way, that we knew why we were in Kuwait in 1991, but forgot why we were in Iraq in 2003.
This movie loses its charm for me because it doesn't add to what I already know. It's what I suspect and don't know that is important: How come no one higher than staff sergeant was convicted by court martial? When will those who gave the orders be brought to justice? As a signatory of the Geneva Convention we have agreed that if any country indicts, say, our former president or secretary of Defense, we are duty bound to hand them over or try them ourselves.
The sad news is that due to popular ignorance, many people feel that military prison is somehow harsh or harsher than civilian ones. It isn't. (I've known of one soldier sentenced to thirty years, paroled after three). That means that tormentors, such as Graner might be out much sooner than you think, and people like Rumsfeld, Yoo, Bush, and Cheney are not going at all.
With this story, my need for self-flagellation as a relief for masochistic feelings of national guilt is coming to an end. I know what happened. Now I just want justice. I want those who promulgated such orders to be brought to it. In fact it should be.
Standard Operating Procedure.
Other Recommendations:
Mayer, Jane, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals," Doubleday, 2008
Miles, Steven, M. D., "Oath Betrayed: Torture Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror."
Gibney, Alex, "Taxi to The Dark Side," DVD.
Kennedy, Rory, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." DVD
Description of Standard Operating Procedure
Genre: Documentary
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-OCT-2008
Media Type: DVD
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